Child Obesity Statistics

Obesity statistics from around the world make depressing reading these days,but when you turn your attention to childhood obesity statistics the figures are truly frightening. It is no wonder therefore that many people today believe that child obesity is one of the most serious public health problems which we are going to have to face in the 21st century.

Worldwide more than 1 billion children are now overweight and of these a staggering 300 million are classed as being obese. As if these figures were not bad enough in themselves, no fewer than 22 million children under the age of 5 are now classed as being clinically obese.

Not surprisingly figures vary widely across the globe with countries such as China and Japan coming in with relatively low child obesity statistics figures of 5% while, at the other end of the scale, Samoa shows an almost unbelievable rate as high as 75%.

But even this picture is now changing as obesity becomes very much a problem of urban areas in low and middle income countries. This means that even though countries such as China have a relatively low child obesity rate of just 5%, this figure rises to 20% when you move into the urban areas of the country. Indeed, worldwide 75% of overweight and obese children now live in urban areas of low and middle income countries.

In the United States childhood obesity statistics show that obesity rates in children have more than doubled in the past 25 years and indeed have more than tripled in some age groups. This means that today there are more than 10 million children in the United States alone who are classed as being overweight or obese.

In 1980 some 5% of children in the United States between the ages of 12 and 19 were overweight of obese. This figure is now 18%. Similarly, the figure for children aged between 6 and 11 in 1980 was just 6.5% and today it is 17%. These figures are truly frightening when you consider that 70% of these children will also be obese as adults - 80% for children who have at least one obese parent.

The economic costs of childhood obesity are extremely high and rising by the day as health problems associated with childhood obesity increase. This is seen through such things as the rise in childhood diabetes and heart disease associated with obesity for which treatment costs now run into hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

Among the developed nations of the world the United States now leads the way in terms of both adult and child obesity and, while there are some signs that the increase in obesity rates in America may be slowing, this problem is likely to get worse before it get better.

The United Kingdom too is very much in the forefront when it comes to childhood obesity and the rates here are continuing to rise alarmingly. Today, about 1 million British children under the age of 16 are overweight and, if present trends continue, some 20% of boys and 30% of girls will be overweight or obese by the years 2020.